uname (short for ''unix name'') is a
computer program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...
in
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
and
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...
computer
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
s that prints the name, version and other details about the current machine and the operating system running on it.
History
The
uname system call and command appeared for the first time in
PWB/UNIX. Both are specified by
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...
. The
GNU version of uname is included in the "sh-utils" or "coreutils" packages.
uname itself is not available as a standalone program. The version of
uname bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie. The command is available as a separate package for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
as part of the
GnuWin32 project and the
UnxUtils
UnxUtils is a collection of utility programs that provide popular Unix-based shell commands ported from GNU implementations as native Windows programs that depend only on Win32 and the Microsoft C- runtime ( msvcrt.dll). The collection wa ...
collection of
native
Native may refer to:
People
* '' Jus sanguinis'', nationality by blood
* '' Jus soli'', nationality by location of birth
* Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory
** Nat ...
Win32
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running. Programs can acces ...
ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...
of common GNU Unix-like utilities.
Related and similar commands
* Some Unix variants, such as
AT&T
AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...
UNIX System V
Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...
Release 3.0, include the related
setname program, used to change the values that uname reports.
* The
ver command found in operating systems such as
DOS
DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
,
OS/2
OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...
and
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
is similar to the
uname command.
* The
bash shell provides the special variables
OSTYPE and
HOSTTYPE whose values are similar to those of
uname -o and
uname -m respectively.
Examples
On a system running
Darwin, the output from running
uname with the
-a command-line argument
A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...
might look like the text below:
$ uname -a
Darwin Roadrunner.local 10.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.3.0: Fri Feb 26 11:58:09 PST 2010; root:xnu-1504.3.12~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
The following table contains examples from various versions of
uname on various platforms.
[These are merely meant to broadly represent common systems; actual output may vary depending on hardware type, OS version, and which software patches have been installed.]
See also
*
List of Unix commands
This is a list of the shell commands of the most recent version of the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 which is part of the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). These commands are implemented in many shells on moder ...
*
lsb_release
*
ver (command)
Footnotes
External links
*
*
*
*
*
{{Core Utilities commands
Unix SUS2008 utilities
IBM i Qshell commands